The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

The latest Wolfgang E-Commerce Report is now live. This study gives a comprehensive view of the state of digital marketing in retail and travel, allowing digital marketers to benchmark their 2018 performance and plan their 2019 strategy.

The study analyzes over 250 million website sessions and more than €500 million in online revenue. Google Analytics, new Facebook Analytics reports, and online surveys are used to glean insights.

Revenue volume correlations

One of the unique features of the study is its conversion correlation. All website metrics featured in the study are correlated with conversion success to reveal what the most successful websites do differently.

This year we've uncovered our strongest success correlation ever at 0.67! Just to give that figure context: normally, 0.2 is worth talking about and 0.3 is noteworthy. Not only is this correlation with success very strong, the insight itself is highly actionable and can become a pillar of your digital marketing strategy.

And the stand out metric is (drumroll, please!)...

Number of sessions per user.

To put it plainly, the websites that generate the most online revenue have the highest number of sessions per user over 12 months. Check out the video below to get a detailed explanation of this phenomenon:

These are the top factors that correlated with revenue volume. You can see the other correlations in the full study.

Click to see a bigger version

Average pages per session (.37)

Average session length (.49)

Conversion rate by users (.41)

Number of sessions per user (.67)

Percentage of sessions from paid search (.25)

Average website engagement metrics

Number of sessions per user

Average pages per session

Average session duration

Bounce rate

Average page load time

Average server response time

Retail

1.58

6

3min 18sec

38.04%

6.84

1.02

Multi-channel

1.51

6

3min 17sec

35.27%

6.83

1.08

Online-only

1.52

5

3min 14sec

43.80%

6.84

0.89

Travel

1.57

3

2min 34sec

44.14%

6.76

0.94

Overall

1.58

5

3min 1sec

41.26%

6.80

0.97

Above are the average website engagement metrics. You can see the average number of sessions per user is very low at 1.5 over 12 months. Anything a digital marketer can do to get this to 2, to 3, and to 4 makes for about the best digital marketing they can do.

At Wolfgang Digital, we’ve been witnessing this phenomenon at a micro-level for some time now. Many of our most successful campaigns of late have been focused on presenting the user with an evolving message which matures with each interaction across multiple media touchpoints.

What’s the average conversion rate for online-only vs multi-channel retailers?

What’s the average order value for a hotel vs. tour operator?

Video Transcript

Today I want to talk to you about the most important online consumer trend in 2018. The story starts in a client meeting about four years ago, and we were meeting with a travel client. We got into a discussion about bounce rate and its implication on conversion rate. The client was asking us, "could we optimize our search and social campaigns to reduce bounce rate?", which is a perfectly valid question.

But we were wondering: Will we lower the rate of conversions? Are all bounces bad? As a result of this meeting, we said, "You know, we need a really scientific answer to that question about any of the website engagement metrics or any of the website channels and their influence on conversion." Out of that conversation, our E-Commerce KPI Report was born. We're now four years into it. (See previous years on the Moz Blog: 2015, 2016, 2017.)

The metric with the strongest correlation to conversions: Number of sessions per user

We've just released the 2019 E-Commerce KPI Report, and we have a standout finding, probably the strongest correlation we've ever seen between a website engagement metric and a website conversion metric. This is beautiful because we're all always optimizing for conversion metrics. But if you can isolate the engagement metrics which deliver, which are the money-making metrics, then you can be much more intelligent about how you create digital marketing campaigns.

The strongest correlation we've ever seen in this study is number of sessions per user, and the metric simply tells us on average how many times did your users visit your website. What we're learning here is any digital marketing you can do which makes that number increase is going to dramatically increase your conversions, your revenue success.

Change the focus of your campaigns

It's a beautiful metric to plan campaigns with because it changes the focus. We're not looking for a campaign that's a one-click wonder campaign. We're not looking for a campaign that it's one message delivered multiple times to the same user. Much more so, we're trying to create a journey, multiple touchpoints which deliver a user from their initial interaction through the purchase funnel, right through to conversion.

Create an itinerary of touchpoints along the searcher's journey

1. Research via Google

Let me give you an example. We started this with a story about a travel company. I'm just back from a swimming holiday in the west of Ireland. So let's say I have a fictional travel company. We'll call them Wolfgang Wild Swimming. I'm going to be a person who's researching a swimming holiday. So I'm going to go to Google first, and I'm going to search for swimming holidays in Ireland.

2. E-book download via remarketing

I'm going to go to the Wolfgang Wild Swimming web page, where I'm going to read a little bit about their offering. In doing that, I'm going to enter their Facebook audience. The next time I go to Facebook, they're now remarketing to me, and they'll be encouraging me to download their e-book, which is a guide to the best swimming spots in the wild west of Ireland. I'm going to volunteer my email to them to get access to the book. Then I'm going to spend a bit more time consuming their content and reading their book.

3. Email about a local offline event

A week later, I get an email from them, and they're having an event in my area. They're going for a swim in Dublin, one of my local spots in The Forty Foot, for example. I'm saying, "Well, I was going to go for a swim this weekend anyway. I might as well go with this group." I go to the swim where I can meet the tour guides. I can meet people who have been on it before. I'm now really close to making a purchase.

4. YouTube video content consumed via remarketing

Again, a week later, they have my email address, so they're targeting me on YouTube with videos of previous holidays. Now I'm watching video content. All of a sudden, Wolfgang Wild Swimming comes up. I'm now watching a video of a previous holiday, and I'm recognizing the instructors and the participants in the previous holidays. I'm really, really close to pressing Purchase on a holiday here. I'm on the phone to my friend saying, "I found the one. Let's book this."

Each interaction moves the consumer closer to purchase

I hope what you're seeing there is with each interaction, the Google search, the Facebook ad which led to an e-book download, the offline event, back online to the YouTube video, with each interaction I'm getting closer to the purchase.

You can imagine the conversion rate and the return on ad spend on each interaction increasing as we go. This is a really powerful message for us as digital marketers. When we're planning a campaign, we think about ourselves as though we're in the travel business too, and we're actually creating an itinerary. We're simply trying to create an itinerary of touchpoints that guide a searcher through awareness, interest, right through to action and making that purchase.

I think it's not just our study that tells us this is the truth. A lot of the best-performing campaigns we've been running we've seen this anecdotally, that every extra touchpoint increases the conversion rate. Really powerful insight, really useful for digital marketers when planning campaigns. This is just one of the many insights from our E-Commerce KPI Report. If you found that interesting, I'd urge you to go read the full report today.

About Alan_Coleman —
Alan set up Wolfgang Digital in 2007 at his kitchen table as a specialist paid search agency. Wolfgang Digital is now the European Search Awards "Grand Prix" Prize holders and holds the "Best Agency" title in Ireland's Digital Media Awards.Alan lectures part-time for the Digital Marketing Institute and talks at conferences including SXSW Interactive, The Web Summit, SES London, AdWorld Experience Bologna and Omcap Berlin.When not digital marketing Alan can be found trail running or sea swimming. He has written for State of Search, The Guardian UK, and Moz about digital marketing.

I think I would actually agree, anecdotally, that sessions per user is one of the most important metrics to look at when you're looking at conversion success - but it's always nice to see some data to back that up!

I always try to remember that too much obsession with pure numbers and metrics can really harm the overall success of campaigns, without some level of "stepping back" and looking at the whole strategy holistically. Often ecommerce clients will get obsessed about something like time-on-page or bounce rate, but ignoring the big picture: ROI.

In the book "They Ask You Answer" by Marcus Sheridan , he brings out a fact from his website that customers who had visited 30 pages or more on his website used to convert the best and the conversion rate was almost nil for those who had visited very few pages.

Secondly I want to know whether the conversion rate percentage increased or decreased with the traffic to the website (overall sessions (visits) ). Was this studied ?

Provided Marcus' customers conducted the 30 web pages over multiple visits we're singing from the same hym sheet. As per my reply to Gil above we found an extra visit is twice as valuable than an extra page view.

Which can change how marketers engage with their audience.

Great question!!!! In last year's study we did find a "conversion rate economy of scale". Meaning as overall sessions increased conversion rate followed and vice versa.

It didn't make it into the published findings this year. Let me dive into the data and see if I can find an up to date answer.

Tx for the comment Tuhin. You mention a number of valuable SEO KPIs there. We chose not to go too deep into the non-commercial metrics (ie not clicks and conversion) of any particular channel as they study's purpose is to give an overview of the various channels commercial performance without getting lost in the details of each. We do go deeper into the website analytics themselves.

If we were doing an SEO focused E-commerce report links and visibility are certainly areas we would focus on.

Thanks for the comment Tuhin. You mention a number of valuable SEO KPIs there. We decided not to go too deep into the non-commercial metrics (ie not clicks and conversion) of any particular channel as they study's purpose is to give an overview of the various channels commercial performance without getting lost in the details of each. We do go deeper into the website analytics themselves.

If we were doing an SEO focused E-commerce report links and visibility are certainly areas we would focus on.

Great insights here, one that really stood out to me ,is the increase in actual Page Speeds year over year. Despite it becoming more of an SEO ranking factor with the mobile first index rollout this year.

From some recent research in this area, developers are creating heavier websites, and what is being forgotten is the basic purpose of a website, to provide quick answers or seamless journeys to conversion - this is essentially what the customer wants from any website, all the extra JavaScript etc. looks great but doesn't really provide what the user wants. A speedy website!

Also, the desire in digital marketing for data, tracking scripts etc, appear to be a big part of the speed issue.

Great read, The article is pretty fresh and pretty accurate. I was reading the part where you were discussing YouTube content consumption through remarketing and it just gave me an idea for a research!

I agree that " that every extra touchpoint increases the conversion rate". For us the KPI changes with commercial transactions like B2B or B2C, even within the e-commerce platforms. Even sometime we keep eye on buyer's journey, and based the target person we choose platform for re-targeting or reach-out.

One question, the rate or percentage of bounce serves to detect which users do not see the content of the site interesting, or have not found what they were looking for since they enter a page of our website and without navigating through any link, they abandon the site. A user can stay on our website for a long time and go through many links simply because it is difficult to find what they are looking for and to leave the website frustrated. Would not a study of the design, structure and web usability be first convenient?

A month later, I got an email about a discount from them. They are giving me a discount on a product. Now I can use that discount value to evaluate that how much discount I should give to make a purchase or what extra product I should give as an offer with that discount to make a purchase.

Thanks for sharing your findings. I can't say I'm surprised with the results since I know personally that retargetting is extremely effective on me and often it's not until that 2nd or 3rd visit/interaction I have with the company will I make my first purchase and these subsequent interactions are usually through retargetting.